My team was assembled with the task of creating and performing a workshop on the topic of work values and national culture. In this essay I use the Ancona Model of Team Effectiveness to argue that my team was particularly effective as a result of composition, decision-making ability and alignment with rewards. Our effectiveness could however have been improved by better ease of communication, tighter boundary management and more attention paid to maintenance behaviours. Through this task I have learnt that an effective team requires focus on many other factors than merely the task alone.

Using the Ancona Team Effectiveness Model, effectiveness is measured by four components; performance, member satisfaction, team learning and outsider satisfaction (Ancona et al. p13) (example from lit: why is this relevant). My team was effective in the member satisfaction component (example from lit); prior to this assignment we had never met but we shared a similar work ethic and there was mutual trust that all individual tasks were completed by our specified deadline. (individual needs: work was shared evenly and all had high hopes for grade & primary example.) My team was also effective within the performance component (example from lit), with particular regard to timeliness and efficiency. (primary example).

The extent of the groups’ effectiveness affected by a number of underlying factors, both positively and negatively. Firstly I will discuss those factors that most positively affected the group’s effectiveness with emphasis placed on the contextual facilitators of composition and rewards. Composition of the group is most commonly explored and rated using Belbin’s Role Inventory (lit example on how effective and how it works). Our team consisted of (discuss)…(analyse). The formal reward offered by the assignment was a collective quantitative mark, based on our work as a whole as opposed to individual merit (explain, using lit example).
Decision Making: all four steps in process. Group comp aids in this… link.
Negative
Communication/Meeting – often difficult due to me living on GC and not having a lot of spare time in the day… but we were able to overcome this (email, google docs) and some was cancelled out by swift and succinct decision making.
Boundary Management – although it was good that we all worked so will together, some better boundaries would have meant that things would have been clearer? (lit examples of how unstructured teams can be ineffective).

Differently?
Communication – could have made better use of Skype and other communication techniques (reference to virtual teams)?
Organised clear roles in the team – who is responsible for what (lit examples on how this can be very effective)

Thesis: The team was _____ effective due to the factors in the _____ model with particular reference to _______, _______, ______ . There are also factors that could have been improved including _______, ________, ________ . From this experience I have learnt that _________.